The vocabulary of biology is made easier through knowing the meanings of elements that make up whole words. English continues to adopt words from foreign languages and to build its vocabulary by inventing new words from old elements. Most of the words entering English every year reside in technical vocabularies and knowing what the elements mean prepares medical students and physicians, the practitioner of any biological science, and anyone else to decipher these new words that might name a newly discovered microbe or mastodon, a disease, or a surgical procedure.